Tips on successful fundraising

Whether you are a regular fundraiser or if this is your first time, here are some useful tips in this guide to help you along and make your event a roaring success!

What’s your goal?

Make sure you set yourself a goal, both personal and for the fundraising amount too. Try to be realistic but be brave as well and think big! Plan and write everything down and involve as many people as you can, if asked most people are willing to lend a hand to support you. Your colleagues will all have different skills, so try to make the best of their knowledge to make the fundraising easier.

Why are you doing it?

Explain to your supporters why you are raising funds. The more details and information you can give your supporters, the more passionate you appear and this will help you to reach your fundraising target. If you want more information about the work of Rainbows

Get sponsored!

Ask your friends and families to support you and then think about all the different people you know – don’t forget to tell them why you’re doing it! Set up and personalise your own on line fundraising page at Justgiving.com or down load a sponsor form here For help or more information contact supportercare@rainbows.co.uk – or call us on 0800 952 1133 – we would love to hear from you!

Gift Aid

Please remember to always ask your sponsors to Gift Aid their donation, if they are UK tax payers. This means that we can receive an extra 25p for every £1 donated. It doesn’t cost your sponsors any extra and we won’t put their details onto our database – but we will need their full name, home address and postcode to be able to claim the Gift Aid on their donation. Use our own sponsor form or if designing your own then please make sure you ask for this information and include a Gift Aid box that they tick to give us permission to make this claim.

Gift Aid can be claimed on voluntary donations from individuals (not company donations). It can’t be claimed against sales of tickets or the proceeds of a general collection.

Matched funding

A lot of companies have budgets for matching their employees’ fundraising efforts, find out if your employer does this, if not, be brave and ask if they would be prepared to support you.

Make the most of all your work contacts, such as suppliers and clients. If you know them well, they may well sponsor you through their company.

Do it legally and safely!

We want you to have fun and keep things as simple as possible when doing your fundraising. To put our minds at rest and to stop you accidentally breaking any laws, please read the important stuff below. Check out www.how2fundraise.org which has lots of external advice to ensure everything you are doing is legal.

You need to consider health and safety and legal requirements when doing your fundraising. It’s all about common sense and keeping safe. Follow the professional advice of equipment manufacturers and staff supervising any facilities.

Food hygiene is vitally important. No one likes to get sick, especially as a reward for raising money for a charity. Please take great care when handling food and work to basic rules for safe preparation, storage, display and cooking. You can find lots of useful information at www.food.gov.uk and www.nhs.uk/livewell/homehygiene

Be sure you are in good health to undertake your event and if in any doubt, gain clearance from your doctor, particularly in relation to a physically demanding activity.

Tell us about it

We’d love to hear what you’re planning and we can post information about your event or fundraising on our blog to let others know. After the event make sure you send us a photo with information on how things went. Keep up to date information on Facebook and Twitter – let everybody know how hard you’re working to support Rainbows!

Every gesture matters. Every penny counts.

We only get around 15% of our funding from government bodies, so we rely on donations to fund the care we give - your help pays for facilities like our special adapted bathrooms.